Caution: State Laws Hazardous to Your Health

Receive the latest prop-zero updates in your inbox

Civics 101 teaches us that the principal job of a legislature is to make laws. That's straightforward enough. But the real question is, for whom?

Nowhere is this question filled with more convoluted answers than in Sacramento.

With so many powerful interest groups buzzing around, legislators are hard-pressed on how to act, especially when the needs of groups collide or, worse yet, when the demands of special interests oppose what some might call the public good.

That's precisely the case right now with AB 783 by Assemblymember Mary Hayashi, which would allow physicians to employ physical therapists in their offices.

Physicians who support the bill say it promotes continuity of treatment.

Independent therapists and their allies counter that the law could enable some physicians to prescribe unnecessary or sub-par treatment within the cozy confines of their own offices, thereby discouraging independent assessments of the physical therapist.

Hayashi's bill is not the only health-related legislation in Sacramento jeopardizing the public interest.